Catching up with friends. Looks like Laura has been busy:

Still some LA trip stuff to come, but let me talk a little about Amy Berg before she has her people in London kill me.

John Rogers had told me that Amy was someone I had to meet as she gives both good sci fi and can plan a complicated heist under pressure. He hadn’t quite prepared me for just how awesome she is. Drinking a mini bar dry while trading origin stories with @bergopolis was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had in America.

And she knows TV to a scary level. You really need to keep an eye on the next season of Eureka.

Plus you can pump her for Slingers spoilers:

She also lifted a sizzle prop from me in a move that would put the Leverage crew to shame.

Nicely played, Berg. Nicely played.

What a beautiful phrase.

I’ve always been drawn to the parts on old maps that depict sea monsters – here be dragons – or simply the unknown. We have an ultima thule print hanging in the living room as a reminder that there’s a lot of world out there. So it struck me as marvelous that there are maps of the known world drawn up to ward off further investigation. And it seemed fitting to mention the map below as I’m off again to Ireland tomorrow:

…the country still looks more attractive than the rest of Europe

Context as always is everything. I found this via Lloyd’s I’ve said too much. Another blogger I wish would say a lot more.

So yes, Ireland. It’s been a lot of fun working with Ciaran. Tomorrow and Thursday we’ll attempt to wrap up the initial phase of concept building, but everything looks in good shape ahead of getting the pilot written.

I’m back in London for one (busy) day before heading out to LA on Saturday. Not as much time to blog as I’d like, but I’ll try and do a little brain dumping between now and then.

Which is why I can’t find time to get to my own autopsy this weekend.

Keep an eye on the #Warhouse hashtags tomorrow care of @bookpirate and @lukemassey. Looks like they’re bringing the dinner home:

Are you getting a Dogsoldiers vibe too? Tell me you don’t want to see that…

And then there’s Jamillah/Jemimah:

There’s an old echoing conversation somewhere on my Gtalk account where I was dicing around another trip to the States. I like the road and I like the desert, car rallies helped fuel my addiction.

In that conversation with one Davey G Johnson, a devilish pact was formed. He was entering a competition to win a car and gas to run it around. I had a feeling he might win, he’s smart like that, creative.

I wanted to get to Texas to see the country and to see some friends. The fateful line is there on that archived conversation, “If I win the car, I’ll drive you to Texas.”

Though we have known each other for a number of years, we’ve never been in the same room. Funny though, we’ve both been in the same room at different times. Echoes and ghosts maybe. At the end of July we’ll be in a small room on four wheels.

Let’s see how that works out.

See how it’s working out here.

I faved this snap of my friend Laura the other day:

She looks so damn vibrant it hurts.

I’ve known Laura a while now and she keeps me on my toes. It’s hard to keep up with all the cool stuff she gets up to and right now she’s in Japan:

Do yourselves a favour and drop a fiver on Three… Two… One.

She’s out in Japan with The Young Punx. Last time she made a pre recorded appearance:

It’s worth tracking down Understand by Asian Kung Fu Generation to see just how cool that ‘cover’ is. I don’t normally pay heed to YouTube comments, but this one is on the money:

everything Laura Kidd touches turns to gold

Japan just had a blast. Guaranteed.

I’m working on Fantasy Island with George Hamilton and the corpse of Ricardo Montalbán, we pretty much just jetski a lot and spray ourselves orange. Most nights we drink Mai Tais and feast on corpses, but I still often find myself wondering ” how is the progress of Mike’s syphilis?”

Sleep tight, Johnny.

At the back end of 2003, Jess and I bought a couple of round the world plane tickets so we could hang out in real life with some of the weirdos we’d met on the Internet over the last couple of years. We spent three months travelling, 5 weeks Amtraking the US then Mexico, Australia and Japan. One hell of a trip. Along the way we crashed with people that we had only known as screen names. Some were from the message board of the now defunct zine Punk Planet. Back in the day we probably spent more time than was good for us on those boards.

Early 2004 and we’re in Perth. I’m not sure it was the highlight of the trip but its certainly the most memorable leg. We’re staying with Johnny Hicks and things are fucked up. There’s a lot of alcohol, a fair bit of blood (more if you include the aftermath of the murder we witnessed), one trip to the ER and what can only be described as a drunken wrestling match in which I had to pin Johnny to the floor lest he punch me out. Force of nature. The night before I’d put him in the recovery position after he had a seizure and split his head open (that wasn’t the ER trip by the way). We met his brother Jeremy (also in a band) and spent an evening watching horror films until it was time to grab a cab – Johnny then proceeded to tell the driver the story of how he lost his virginity in lieu of a tip.

That’s just scratching the surface.

Johnny was the most self destructive person I ever met. But I was still shocked to get the news today that he had died.

I’m writing this with two empty tumblers of Scotch and a shit load of bad punk music.

I got a couple of emails from Johnny at the beginning of the month. We hadn’t spoken for a while and by the end of the exchange he was signed up for Twitter. His last update reads:

Well I don’t think I could survive turning 39 every day. Owwwwwwwwww

Funny fucker.

That was July 14th. He had a massive epileptic fit on the morning of the 19th and was gone.

But in January 2004 we’re sitting by a lake for a lift that never came. We’re sat on a case of beer that’s getting smaller by the hour and talking shit. One of us is about to get attacked by a spider. Life is good.

His last email to me signs off with the line Be all you can be.

Johnny always wore his heart on his sleeve. There was a lot of bluster, but you didn’t have to get to know him very well to understand what a sweetheart he was. He didn’t make it easy to be his friend, but the experience was worth the occasional split lip and shouting session. He was my friend.

He had a lot. They’re raising drinks and calling him names over on his Facebook page right now and that’s where I found this:

You can’t get more punk rock than playing drums in a shop window being filmed on a security camera.

Most people won’t notice, but trust me… the world just got a little less interesting.

I guess about the same time I ran into Corran online I also stumbled across Ben (or vice versa) via Warren Ellis. Can’t remember exactly when that was, but its been a while now. Slingers began as my part of a comic project that Ben and I planned (along with George) a year or so ago. And funnily enough around the same time I fell into doing the TV thing, Ben became a movie producer. And just to intertwine things a little more I ended up writing the autopsy scene for the movie that Ben is now working on: Warhouse.

Ben and the director, Luke, are both on Twitter and well worth a follow if you want to see how they’re putting together a horror/action flick on a low budget.

Or if you just just have a thing for knives.

The other day Ben tweeted that he was packing his bag to go off to work and attached this photo:

Nice.

You can see more of the fun these guys are having here and here.

Although we’re working on radically different projects its nice that we came to them at around the same time. Again, as with the Brownlees, we tend to share not only the same interests and influences but also a feeling that we we need to have a go at stuff like this the way its supposed to be done.

Let’s see how that works out…

Very excited about this evening:

I started working with The Brownlee Brothers on Slingers just as they were putting the finishing touches to their movie.

I’ve been dying to see it for ages and tonight’s the night…